snapshots

Saturday 14 Oct 2006
He sat in his wheelchair, his hands fidgeting with pieces of crumpled paper. I always see him when I work on Saturdays. Always alone, just by the entrance to the retirement home, with swollen, tired, red eyes, a wrinkled and haggard face bearing the marks of old age and scars. But it was only today I noticed that he only had one leg. The trunk of the trouser was rolled up to cover the stump of his missing leg.

I grabbed my bags of post, hauled it over to my bike. As I jumped, ran, and sprinted around delivering mail in the street, I thought of the old man watching me from his wheelchair. Perhaps my youthful strength, my ability to walk and go anywhere was a constant stab in his heart, a constant reminder of what he had lost.

I always greet him when I see him, and wish him well whenever I go leave again, half expecting, and half knowing that the same time next week he might very well be there. Or he might not.

Friday 13 October 2006
The train pulled away slowly, the gentle rocking motion enticing me to close my eyes and doze for the ten minutes or so I had before Leiden. The clinking and clanking of the rails was an upbeat, rhytmic beat.

Silently we sped out of the urban sprawl and into the countryside. I looked outside and what a sight. Green meadows covered with a mystic veil of morning mist, looking like clouds that had fallen, fallen to earth. The mist cloud hung low above the ground, suspended in mid-air as if time had stopped, and shrouded the trees and streams flashing by in a thin sheeth of pure white. Is this what heavens looks like? Sleep left, and instead I was captured by the view outside the window. Everyone else had their heads down, buried in their books and papers, or in deep slumber.

I wondered who else noticed the beauty that vanished before us outside...beauty that will never be the same again.



Thursday 12 October 2006
In the middle of the train station, rush hour. People rushed mindlessly on their way to and fro, minding their own business, passing one another as if everyone else was invisible.

I walked amongst the crowd, a little dazed, a little lost. Suddenly from nowhere a man started yelling. I turned to see a man shouting at a woman, and the woman screaming abuse back. And in the corner a little kid, perhaps not more than five, howling and crying. Perhaps the grownups were the parents, but they were too busy hurling angry and swear words at each other to notice how red the kid's eyes had gotten. Their screams and shouts drowned out the cries. Their words overshadowed the tears.

I walked away slowly, more dazed, more lost.